The bond between us sits easy and open, not pulling, not straining. Just present. I've been carrying the weight of it for so long as something contested, something fought over by two people who didn't want to want each other, that I don't quite know what to do with it when it feels like this. Like something that fits.
"What happens after Caspian delivers the evidence?" I ask.
"The Convocation reviews it. If they agree it's sufficient, they suspend the containment order pending investigation." He draws a slow breath. "If they don't—"
"They will."
"You don't know that."
"Caspian Thorne walked into a room where he had every reason to stay neutral," I say, "and put his family's stolen methodology on Ryder Ashford's desk. He's going to take that evidence to the Convocation and he's going to make it land, because that's what Caspian does with things he's decided to do." A pause. "I don't particularly want to give him credit for it, but I'm not going to pretend I didn't see it."
Ryder is quiet for a moment. "You trust him."
"I don't know if trust is the word." I stare at the ceiling. "But I think he's on the right side of this one. For his own reasons, but still."
"His own reasons being you," Ryder says, and the flatness in it is not quite jealousy but runs adjacent to it.
"His own reasons being whatever Caspian Thorne's reasons are," I say. "Which I'm not going to pretend to fully understand."
Silence. The coals settle.
"He's not wrong to be drawn to you," Ryder says, after a while. It costs him something, that sentence. I can tell by the specific evenness he uses to deliver it. "I can find that inconvenient and still acknowledge it."
"Very generous of you."
"Don't push it."
"I'm not pushing anything." I press my face briefly against his shoulder. "I'm noting the growth."
"There's no growth. I'm the same person I was two hours ago."
"You're really not," I say. "But I'll let you have that one."
Outside, Thane's footsteps have started again, slow and measured. A man walking because standing still is worse. I know that particular restlessness. I've felt it myself.
"He's not coming in," I say.
"No." Ryder's voice is careful. "He won't."
"Is that better or worse for him?"
"I don't know." A pause. "I think that's between him and himself."
I think about Thane crouching beside me on the training field with his hand flat on the ground and the gold fading from his eyes and nothing to say. The specific presence of someone who shows up and doesn't make it about themselves. I think about the shame I know he carries, the mother he doesn't speak of, and the way he looks at me sometimes with that complicated thing moving behind his eyes that he smooths over fast.
The bond with Ryder runs warm and open beside all of that, and I let it exist alongside the rest without trying to resolve it. Some things don't resolve neatly. Most things, actually.
"Ryder," I say.
"Mm."
"If the Convocation takes twenty-four hours—"
"Sleep," he says. "Whatever comes next, you'll handle it better having slept."
"That's practical advice dressed up as concern."
"It's both," he says. "Go to sleep, Angel."
